The Journal: BioMed Central Public Health

The Study: The children of men with stressful jobs are at higher risk of attempting suicide, particularly if their fathers held jobs in which they had little control over their work. The study, which was funded by the Canadian Population Health Initiative, looked at 30,000 men who were working or had worked at sawmills in British Columbia. Aleck Ostry, from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues collected data on the men's history of employment, their physical work conditions and their psychosocial work conditions, such as the level of responsibility, the control over everyday tasks and their time constraints, all of which can govern the the level of stress the men experienced in their jobs.

The results of the study show that 250 of the approximately 20,000 children in the study attempted or committed suicide from 1985 to 2001. A father's work conditions while his children were younger than 16 years of age had an impact on attempted and completed suicides among those children. In particular, daughters of men with low control over their work may be at higher risk for attempted suicide during childhood and young adulthood. The sons of fathers working in jobs with "low psychological demand" may be at particular risk for completed suicides. The analysis was unusually powerful because the researchers were able to screen out the effect of the father's mental health status on their children's risk of suicide.

What it Means: There's definitely no easy prescription here. We can't all handpick our jobs or working conditions. And it can be just as difficult to control, let alone, eliminate our reactions to stressful situations. So what can we learn from this research? That stress matters, of course, and it matters to entire families. But we need to realize that this study, while very intriguing, still cannot parse cause and effect with any certainty. Just another example of how complicated a child's environment can be and how profound the consequences.

From our Archive:
08/23/2004 Stress and the SuperDad
02/13/2006 Happiness isn't Normal